In this book, Richard Sakwa offers a complex, well-researched investigation of a major event in Russia's post-Soviet political and economic development. “The Yukos affair” refers to the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the concomitant breakup of the Yukos oil company by Vladimir Putin's government. Khodorkovsky was one of the infamous “oligarchs” who emerged in Russia in the 1990s, and Yukos was the country's largest oil company by the time it was sold off under the pretext of repaying tax debts.

The Quality of Freedom is an ambitious book, as Sakwa sets for himself four main goals: to detail the events of the Yukos affair, to explain what caused it, to examine its repercussions for Russia, and to discuss its lessons regarding the nature of freedom. The book can therefore be read in many ways, with each reader finding something of value.

In Sakwa's account of the affair itself, readers will find a biography of Khodorkovsky, a history of Yukos, descriptions of the governmental factions competing over the company, an account of Khodorkovsky's time in prison (so far), and more. For those unfamiliar with the case, the book offers an authoritative summary, but even scholars who have studied the events will find something new here. Khodorkovsky's prison surroundings, his hunger strikes (in defense of others), and his attempted philosophical treatises all received far less media coverage than his arrest and trial, especially after he was moved from Moscow to a distant provincial city. Sakwa devotes large parts of two chapters to those experiences and does so without sentimentalizing any of the participants. Indeed, such ambiguity is a central characteristic of the Yukos affair, as Sakwa demonstrates time and again.

In seeking an answer to why the affair happened, Sakwa presents the main arguments in the scholarly literature and the Russian press. The explanation with the greatest empirical support is what he calls the “factional” argument: Segments of the Putin government had economic, political, and personal reasons for wanting to dismantle and take over Yukos. Sakwa details, for example, the motivations and actions of presidential aide Igor Sechin and oil trader Gennady Timchenko, as well as the rivalry between leaders of the state companies Gazprom and Rosneft, which competed over the spoils from the breakup of Yukos. The author also finds room for a more ideological explanation, seeing the conflict as a “clash between various concepts of freedom” (p. 5). He shows evidence of Putin's statist worldview—the idea that economic and political development are impossible without state leadership—and argues that that worldview influenced the decision to go after Khodorkovsky and Yukos.

An additional possible explanation is the one Sakwa calls “political.” It argues that Russian authorities actually preferred to use informal, nontransparent methods in their dealings with economic actors, because those methods prevented opponents from mounting an effective defense. This argument is plausible, but it is hard to verify independently since the authorities have also sometimes used formal methods. It also does not explain why Yukos, rather than some other firm, was the object of attack in this instance. While it could simply have been chance, Sakwa shows that several actions by Khodorkovsky and Yukos—seeking influence over policymakers, developing civil-society organizations, achieving rapid growth, and acting abrasively on a personal level—made the company a logical target in a world of factional conflict and statist development.

Whatever caused it, the Yukos affair had implications for the rest of the Russian political economy. For many, Khodorkovsky was a successful entrepreneur who had moved beyond his murky past to become a champion of private enterprise, global integration, and democratic politics—his arrest called all of those developments into question. Sakwa, however, avoids simplistic characterizations here. In fact, one of the book's most admirable qualities is that it resists the temptation to paint its picture in black and white. Neither Khodorkovsky nor Putin is hero or villain. The security agencies are influential but not all-powerful. Russia is neither guaranteed democracy and prosperity nor doomed to authoritarianism and underdevelopment. Some readers may be frustrated by the lack of stark conclusions, but to offer them would serve only to create false certainty.

In the realm of economic development, Russia has survived the breakup of Yukos, the decline in oil prices, and the global financial crisis surprisingly well. The country is still too heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, but it has so far avoided the worst effects of the “resource curse,” and the reexpansion of state ownership into energy and other sectors has not (yet?) meant a return to Soviet-era stagnation. Regarding politics, there is no doubt about Russia's authoritarian turn under Putin, but Sakwa notes that the Yukos affair was just one of many events involved in that turn, and he holds out some hope that new president Dmitry Medvedev, who is not from the security forces, will be more receptive to competitive politics than Putin was. Finally, in discussing Russian foreign policy, Sakwa argues that while Putin clearly hoped that the transfer of Yukos back to state hands would give Russia increased influence in the world, the practical truth is that being an “energy superpower” is difficult if not impossible, and Russia certainly has not achieved such status. Thus, while the Yukos affair represented a sea change in the operation of the Russian political economy, it was not the end of pluralism in Russia, and it did not spell doom for private ownership or economic development.

In addition to this detailed empirical work, Sakwa uses the Yukos affair to delve into political theory, asking what freedom is and where it comes from. If in the West discussions of practical freedom often focus on reducing the state's ability to infringe on individual liberties, in Russia they often ask how to ensure that personal freedoms do not undermine the state's ability to maintain order and foster development. These views are not as incompatible as they may seem, and in any case, both Putin and Khodorkovsky claim to be in the second camp. Of course, instituting such freedom in a real society involves constant disagreement and compromise, and Sakwa argues that this is one of the main engines of contemporary Russian politics. In addition to these society-wide conceptions of freedom, however, he also considers the deeply personal understanding of freedom that comes from physical imprisonment. Whether Khodorkovsky's professed transformation is real or instrumental, he claims that prison life has clarified his priorities and given him the freedom to think and speak in ways and on issues he could not have as the leader of a large company. The book will not replace the classics of political theory, but it combines the philosophical with the empirical in an interesting way that will allow researchers and students to address fundamental questions in a new context.

Overall, then, The Quality of Freedom tackles multiple issues in impressive fashion. It offers insights on the Yukos affair, Russian development, and state–society relations that will be relevant to scholars of many different regions studying a range of important questions.